Friction between nontenured faculty and administrators at the University of Iowa increased this week after the release of hiring guidelines that limit the length of some instructors’ contracts and the number of courses others can teach.

The guidelines reinforce university policy that in recent years hasn’t been strictly followed, particularly within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The college, which employees about 40 percent of the university’s nontenured faculty, found inconsistencies when it reviewed hiring practices of its more than 40 departments and programs, Joseph Kearney, the college’s interim dean, told the Des Moines Register. The review was prompted by complaints from nontenured staff over workloads, pay and benefits.

“This is an attempt to provide clear and consistent guidance to departments,” Kearney wrote in an email to the Register.

The guidelines limit visiting faculty contracts to three years and, beginning in fall 2019, restrict adjunct faculty to teaching one course per semester. It’s not been unusual for visiting faculty to be on the staff longer than three years. In addition, between 20 and 30 adjuncts now teach two courses a semester.

“Part of our goal is being consistent — appointing adjuncts appropriately,” Kearney said in an interview. Being an adjunct “is not meant to be a livelihood. It’s mostly people supplementing their income and having opportunities to teach students.”

Joseph Kearney, interim dean College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Iowa(Photo: University of Iowa)

Kearney said he didn’t anticipate anyone losing their job over the change. Instead, he said adhering more strictly to university standards could mean more visiting professors will be hired instead of relying on adjunct professors. He also said some current visiting instructors could be appointed as lecturers, while some instructors could take on additional teaching duties.

“It all depends on the needs of the students and the availability of teaching faculty,” he wrote in an email.

Faye Bartram, a visiting faculty in her second year of teaching at the university, acknowledged nontenured faculty want consistent hiring guidelines between academic departments. Still, the newly released guidelines were implemented without input from people such as herself, she said.

“The guidelines seem very restrictive,” said Bartram, a Soviet and French historian who teaches three courses. “The university wants shared governance, but it seems counter-intuitive when decisions are made like this without our input.”

Bartram, who was a graduate student at the University of Iowa, said restricting the number of years or courses a faculty member can teach will harm the quality of education students receive.

“You’re going to have a higher turnover rate” of instructors, she said. “How is that going to benefit students?”

After the sit-in, university administrators agreed to talk with nontenured faculty representatives about concerns over pay, workloads and benefits. After about three months of meetings, the group secured benefits, including access to health and dental insurance for visiting faculty who work at least half-time at the university.

A couple weeks after the agreement was reached, university officials halted the meetings, renewing tension between the two sides. A regent spokesman said the meetings were stopped because administrators didn’t want to “unintentionally interfere” with the group’s right to organize.

“Until this group’s status is better defined, meeting with them could constitute a violation” of Iowa’s collective bargaining law, Josh Lehman, spokesman for the regents, wrote in an email.

Members of the nontenured faculty have said they aren’t trying to unionize but rather have banned together over shared concerns about working conditions.

The university, like others across the country, has two categories of faculty: regular track and fixed-term, also called nontenured. Regular track faculty includes those with tenure, which means they have permanent employment and can be fired only for cause, such as violating university policies.

At the University of Iowa, the number of tenure or tenure-track faculty has shrunk to 1,516 this academic year from 1,657 in 2007-08, university data show. In 2007-08, nearly 62 percent of the university’s teaching staff were tenure or on track to become tenure. This year, that number is 46 percent.

That’s meant more reliance on nontenured faculty, who are appointed into a position for a fixed amount of time and typically have contracts of a semester or longer. At UI, nontenured faculty include adjuncts, visiting instructors and lecturers, all of whom teach one or more courses each semester.

The number of nontenured faculty has grown to 1,756 since 2007-08, when there were 1,027 in their ranks. Nearly 54 percent of UI’s faculty are nontenured, data show.

Thomas Harnisch, state relations and policy analysis director for the Washington, D.C.-based American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said the trend toward more nontenured faculty is not unique to the University of Iowa. Over the past decade, he said, as universities have experienced cuts in budgets, administrators have turned to nontenured staff to fill the teaching ranks because their pay is less than permanent professors.

“That’s created some hostility because of the lower pay, and some instability because of the turnover in staff,” Harnisch said.

Budget cuts and enrollment increases prompted the University of Iowa in the past decade to rely more on nontenured staff, Kearney said. The heavier reliance was a factor in the dissatisfaction levels of nontenured staff, he said.

In April, nontenured track faculty publicized 12 demands that included longer and more stable contracts; yearly pay raises; and standardized and consistent workloads.

Jo Butterfield, a visiting assistant professor in the university’s history department for about five years, is among those who support the demands. She said that in the past, she didn’t know from semester to semester whether she’d be teaching. She said pay has been stagnant and she is not offered health care through the university.